I am left alone here at the office; and the truth is, I am
glad my station is to be here, near my own home and out of danger, yet
in a place of doing the King good service. I have this morning good news
from Gibson; three letters from three several stages, that he was safe
last night as far as Royston, at between nine and ten at night. The
dismay that is upon us all, in the business of the kingdom and Navy at
this day, is not to be expressed otherwise than by the condition the
citizens were in when the City was on fire, nobody knowing which way
to turn themselves, while every thing concurred to greaten the fire; as
here the easterly gale and spring-tides for coming up both rivers, and
enabling them to break the chaine. D. Gawden did tell me yesterday, that
the day before at the Council they were ready to fall together by the
ears at the Council-table, arraigning one another of being guilty of
the counsel that brought us into this misery, by laying up all the great
ships. Mr. Hater tells me at noon that some rude people have been, as
he hears, at my Lord Chancellor's, where they have cut down the trees
before his house and broke his windows; and a gibbet either set up
before or painted upon his gate, and these three words writ: "Three
sights to be seen; Dunkirke, Tangier, and a barren Queene."

["Pride, Lust, Ambition, and the People's Hate,
The kingdom's broker, ruin of the State,
Dunkirk's sad loss, divider of the fleet,
Tangier's compounder for a barren sheet
This shrub of gentry, married to the crown,
His daughter to the heir, is tumbled down."

Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 253.--B.]

It gives great matter of talk that it is said there is at this hour, in
the Exchequer, as much money as is ready to break down the floor. This
arises, I believe, from Sir G. Downing's late talk of the greatness of
the sum lying there of people's money, that they would not fetch away,
which he shewed me and a great many others. Most people that I speak
with are in doubt how we shall do to secure our seamen from running over
to the Dutch; which is a sad but very true consideration at this day.
At noon I am told that my Lord Duke of Albemarle is made Lord High
Constable; the meaning whereof at this time I know not, nor whether it,
be true or no. Dined, and Mr. Hater and W. Hewer with me; where they do
speak very sorrowfully of the posture of the times,